CAREER PLANNING

Career planning encourages individuals to explore and gather information, which enables them to syn-the size, gain competencies, make decisions, set goals and take action. It is a crucial phase of human resource development that helps the employees in making strategy for work-life balance. Organizations also need to plan for their employees’ career  development programmes. Companies are designing career programmes in an effort to decrease employee turnover, prevent job turnout and obsolescence, and improve the quality of employees’ work lives. 

The major objectives of career planning are as follows:

1. To identify positive characteristics of the employees.

2. To develop awareness about each employee’s uniqueness.

3. To respect feelings of other employees.

4. To attract talented employees to the organization.

5. To train employees towards teambuilding skills.

6. To create healthy ways of dealing with conflicts, emotions, and stress.

Benefits of Career Planning:

1. Career planning ensures a constant supply of employees, who could be promotes.

2. It helps in improving the loyalty of employees. Career planning encourages an employee’s growth and development.

4. It discourages the negative attitude of superiors who are interested in suppressing the growth of the subordinates.

5. It ensures that senior management knows about the caliber and capacity of the employees who can move upwards.

6. It can always create a team of employees prepared enough to meet any contingency.

7. Career planning reduces labour turnover. 

8. Every organization prepares succession planning towards which career planning is the first step.

COMPONENTS OF CAREER PLANNING:

1. Self Assessment : Self assessment revolves around the thoughtful consideration, reflection, and evaluation of your interests, personality characteristics, values, and skills through a variety of methods, such as the use of a whole host of career-related tools and instruments.

2. Exploration and Research: The career planning component consisting of exploration and research is all about being in information gathering mode. This is the time to explore, collect, and organize all available (and pursue not-soavailable) resources to eventually begin analyzing them to see what top options arise.

3. Decision Making: The decision-making step of the career planning process is when you put all the pieces of information about yourself and your carefully collected career information together as best as possible to produce a list of career-related goals and options. 

4. Taking Action: Taking action is one of those things that is easier said than done. This stage is about literally being proactive with your career plans and following through with what you

have decided on doing. 

5. Evaluation: After you have made your career-related decision and identified your goals, keep in mind that many of the folks who achieve career success are the ones who continually evaluate and assess their status. They keep track of their career progress throughout their lifetime.

Components of the effective career planning and development process include:

1. Being self-aware: To have an effective career you must be aware of your personality, interests, aptitude, self-concept, skills, etc. Most people try to learn about these by reflecting on their experiences. However, there are many other activities and instruments that can aid you in this process. These involve creating situations that will prod you to intensively reflect on yourself and on your career objective.

2. Getting information on available opportunities: To develop a career path, you need to know what opportunities are available and how you fit into them. For this, you need to keep a track of the emerging jobs, the changing face of technology and its effect on employment, the kind of expertise available in the market for different employment opportunities, etc.

3. Preparing for the opportunities: Preparation for opportunities has two aspects: domain related and non-domain related. The former would require updating your subject knowledge and finding out how it can be applied. The latter includes soft skills such as interpersonal skills, communications skills, teamwork skills etc. To facilitate the process one must undergo skill assessments, network with professional groups and research organizations, do projects with organizations, read business magazines, etc.

4. Developing one’s career: Career development happens when you are fairly confident of your career objective and career plan. Before you reach this phase, you might have hopped from one career to another and in the process might be surer of which career best suits you. If you are still unsure of the career most suitable for you, you can undergo career counselling. Career development may require you to create assignments for yourself (challenging your limits), reflect on and enrich your assignments, develop conceptual models relevant your task area, and so on.